Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient data transmission scheme where the data is split into smaller streams and each stream is transmitted using a sub-carrier with a smaller bandwidth than the total available transmission bandwidth. The efficiency of OFDM results from selecting sub-carriers that are mathematically orthogonal to each other. This orthogonality prevents closely situated sub-carriers from interfering with each other while each is carrying a portion of the total user data.
For practical reasons, OFDM may be preferred over other transmission schemes such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). When user data is split into streams carried by different sub-carriers, for example, the effective data rate on each sub-carrier is less than the total transmitted data rate. As a result, the symbol duration of data transmitted with an OFDM scheme is much larger than the symbol duration of data transmitted with other schemes. Larger symbol durations are preferable as they can tolerate larger delay spreads. For instance, data that is transmitted with large symbol duration is less affected by multi-path than data that is transmitted with shorter symbol duration. Accordingly, OFDM symbols can overcome delay spreads that are typical in wireless communications without the use of a complicated receiver for recovering from such multi-path delay.
Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) refers to a type of wireless transmission and reception scheme wherein both a transmitter and a receiver employ more than one antenna. A MIMO system takes advantage of the spatial diversity or spatial multiplexing options created by the presence of multiple antennas. In addition, a MIMO system improves signal quality, such as for example signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and increases data throughput.
Multi-path, once considered a considerable burden to wireless communications, can actually be utilized to improve the overall performance of a wireless communication system. Since each multi-path component carries information about a transmitted signal, if properly resolved and collected, these multi-path components reveal more information about the transmitted signal, thus improving the communication.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems that are used with Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) are used to properly process multi-path for improving the overall system performance. In fact, MIMO-OFDM systems are considered the technology solution for the IEEE 802.11n standard. An example of a MIMO-OFDM system is shown in FIG. 1. A transmitter 102 processes a data stream Tx in an OFDM Tx processing unit 102a. This OFDM processing includes sub-carrier allocation and OFDM modulation of each sub-carrier. The modulated sub-carriers are then mapped to multiple antennas 1031 . . . 103m according to a MIMO algorithm in a MIMO Tx processing unit 102b. Once mapped, the sub-carriers are transmitted to receiver 104 over multiple antennas 1031 . . . 103m simultaneously.
At receiver 104, the modulated sub-carriers are received on multiple antennas 1051 . . . 105n. A MIMO processing unit 104a prepares the sub-carriers for demodulation. The sub-carriers are then demodulated in OFDM Rx processing unit 104b, yielding the Rx data.
One of the challenges of the MIMO-OFDM system design of 802.11n, however, is system capacity. Presently, an efficient method for optimizing the system capacity of a MIMO-OFDM system does not exist, particularly when the system utilizes a large number of sub-carriers. The “water-pouring” solution, for example, is a technique for increasing system capacity by selectively performing power or bit allocation to each sub-carrier. This technique requires, however, that the transmitter be aware of channel state information. The transmitter estimates this channel state information using feedback from a receiver in the system. The signaling overhead of this feedback, however, is significant and can limit the increase in system performance, particularly in systems transmitting large amounts of data and/or utilizing a large number of sub-carriers.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have alternate schemes for optimizing the system capacity of an MIMO-OFDM.